by Chris Dolley
He was enormous. And wore a smile as colourful as his clothes.
“He’s Basque,” I heard someone say as though that explained everything.
“Ah, Basque,” I said. “Euskadi.”
It was my one word of Basque – picked up from a documentary – and it produced startling results.
I was grabbed.
A long lost son couldn’t have received a warmer bear hug. I wasn’t quite sure what Remy said, other than it was very fast, and even more unintelligible than the local patois – the words weren’t so much joined together by ‘r’s as molecularly bonded. But I assumed it went along the lines of – ‘Was I Basque too? I thought they said you were English? Aren’t you Bobby Charlton?’
As the meal progressed, so did the number of documents I had to sign. There were almost as many forms as there were courses. And this was just the start.
For one, I’d have to have a medical … and insurance … and, being France, an identity card, complete with picture and doctor’s signature.
I began to wonder what level of team I’d signed to play for? Had I unwittingly become a professional? Do village teams normally conduct medicals and employ chefs?
And why did Racing Club sound so familiar?
I had vague memories from the early days of European club football. Wasn’t there a famous team called Racing Club back in the sixties?
Still, the season was two months away – plenty of time to get fit – and it’s not as though they’d throw me into a big match untried.
Or so I thought.
Until someone mentioned the Cassagne Fête – three days of celebration and a football match.
Football match?
“Oui.”
A friendly. In three weeks time.
I put down my wedge of Camembert. I knew just how friendly a ’friendly’ could be.
oOo
The friendliest of all being a match I’d seen at Culham, just outside Oxford, where I’d taken a short contract many years ago. Culham was home to the Joint European Torus project – a model of European integration, with scientists from all over the community gathered together to accelerate particles to their heart’s content.
And then someone came up with the brilliant idea to cement European relations further with a friendly game of football between the scientists and the manual staff.
And to make it fair, the manual staff would field a veteran team – no one under forty.
The big day arrived with blue skies and everyone looking forward to a pleasant lunchtime kickabout. A hundred spectators lined the pitch as the cleanest, most elegant footballer I had ever seen strode out into the middle. His kit looked brand new – ironed and pressed, it shone and dazzled – a perfect replica of the West German national kit. He was the head of the project and, as the match began, it was obvious he’d played before – he was comfortable on the ball, he passed with accuracy and strolled the park like an older, slightly overweight version of Franz Beckenbauer.
That is until he tried a run down the left wing. Never have I seen such a tackle come from such an unexpected source. The right back must have been pushing retirement; he looked frail, spindly and slightly hunched – a bit like Ghandi after a bad bout of glandular fever. The German approached, smooth and silky, the ball twinkling between his feet. And then – wham – no German, no ball, no game.
I have seen hard tackles. I have seen people kicked up in the air. But this was something else. This was football as it used to be played – in the Middle Ages. When heads were used for footballs and fancy-footed foreigners were fair game once they crossed the halfway line.
The game ended immediately. Or, more accurately, as soon as the German came back out of orbit and discovered gravity the hard way. A full five seconds later, he staggered to his feet, grabbed the ball and started shouting and gesticulating. He wasn’t playing any more. No one was playing any more. Ever! Sending off wasn’t good enough, the match was abandoned.
He stormed back into the building, the ball clenched firmly under his arm.
I never heard what happened to the right back.
But I had a nasty feeling that in three weeks time the whole village would see exactly what happened to unfit forty year-olds who drank too much at village fetes.
I had three weeks to save my reputation – three weeks to get fit.
oOo
The next morning, the alarm went off at 6:30. Time to get up. And what had seemed like a good idea the night before, rapidly became less so as the thought of an early morning run penetrated the warm covers of the bed. Perhaps tomorrow. Or in an hour or so.
It was only the greater fear – that of making a complete fool of myself at the village fete – that propelled me downstairs. If I didn’t start today it would be worse tomorrow. And if the thought of running in the early morning was bad, it was nothing compared to that of running in the strength-sapping, heat of the day.
A few minutes later I was decked out in shorts and tennis shoes and blinking into the early morning sun. A loosening jog to the top of the hill, I thought.
It started out well. The first forty yards were downhill, I lengthened my stride and the years fell away. Only to snap back with a vengeance as soon as I turned out of our drive and hit the uphill section of road. A few yards later, I heard something thudding in my chest. I think my heart had just woken up and wanted out.
A few yards more and my pace was just on the forward side of reverse, Lungs had joined forces with Heart, and Stomach was wondering what had happened to breakfast. Only Legs were holding out, but a few heavy-legged strides more and even they started passing notes to Head – notes with ’How about stopping now?’ and ’We could always try again later’ written in large shaky letters.
Which seemed like a good idea. After all, you don’t want to overdo things on the first day … and three weeks can be a longer time than you think … and wasn’t that a muscle twinge I felt just then?
A unanimous Body turned and walked home. I’d barely jogged a hundred yards.
Walking back, I was reminded of a similar experience ten years earlier when I was in training for the works annual Sport’s Day. That had seemed like a good idea at the time too – a pleasant day out and the chance to see if I still had the old speed.
But I hadn’t run or played any sport for about a year and neither had my colleagues. So, four of us decided to try out a running track we’d noticed on the way to work. Nothing strenuous, we thought, a few laps of the track and a sprint or two – just to settle us in.
We decided to start with a gentle 400 metres. I slotted in at the back, brimming with confidence, knowing I had the speed to kick for home whenever I wanted. I’d run the 100, 200 and 400 metres for my school and, in my head, I was still as fit as I’d been when I was fifteen. After all, people like me didn’t need to train – we were naturally fit.
I dropped out on the first bend. By the back straight there were only two left. A minute later bodies were lying at various intervals along the track, chests heaving and lungs complaining. No one had managed to finish.
Now I was ten years older.
oOo
As the day of the match neared, I gradually increased my training regime. Very gradually. On the second day, I managed an extra fifty yards before giving up. The third day, another fifty and I jogged back instead of walking.
I started slipping in the occasional sit-up during the day and bought a football and started a few simple routines to drag back my ball skills from distant memory.
By the third week I was managing to walk and run over an undulating seven kilometres of road and track. A very undulating seven kilometres with fast downhill stretches and lung-killing steep climbs that sapped my calves and knotted my long-dormant muscles. But I was getting there.
Practising my ball skills, however, was a problem. There was no flat piece of ground I could use or a decent wall to bounce the ball off. And worse – the heat. Between eight in the morning and nine at night it was like an oven.
Walk out the door and the heat hit you, a few minutes exercise and all your energy was drained.
And I had to play football in this heat? A competitive match in mid-afternoon in mid-July? I could barely walk in the heat, let alone run.
I started praying for rain. Perhaps a polar ice cap could melt for the day and set up some vast climatic shift. An Ice Age would be good – just for the day – no need for woolly mammoths.
When the day of the match came I couldn’t believe it.
It was cloudy.
And cool.
After three weeks of nothing but cloudless skies and perpetual heat, the sun had taken a day off. Surely there was a God.
At three thirty we pulled up outside the Racing Club stadium. It was an impressive sight. There were even turnstiles and the occasional advertising hoarding. And although there was no grandstand there was a sloping grass bank that formed a natural seating area, ten feet high and bordering two sides of the pitch.
And it was already covered in spectators. About three hundred of them.
For me, most impressive of all was the player’s tunnel – which looked suspiciously like a drainage culvert. It cut through the grass bank, joining the changing rooms to the pitch. Presumably to cater for those times when the crowd became too thick for the players to push their way through. I think the designers of the ground were possibly a tad on the optimistic side concerning the club’s future.
Fifteen minutes later, I was running onto the park in the red and black of Racing Club. With my number seven on the back and a swimming pool manufacturer on the front, I felt very professional.
And very old.
A quick scan of the other players revealed a handful of teenagers, an armful of players in their twenties, one or two in their early thirties ... and me, who, according to which rumour you believed, was either the referee’s dad or Bobby Charlton on a goodwill visit.
Unfortunately the truth lay somewhere in between – I looked like Bobby Charlton and played like the referee’s dad.
The match began. I had been hoping for one of those slow-paced summer matches, where the players stroll around in the heat, exuding great skill interspersed with occasional bursts of speed. A less accomplished version of the 1970 World Cup finals, perhaps. I was quickly disabused. The game began like an English cup tie – fast and furious with tackles flying in from all angles. It was tiring just watching the ball.
And as for pacing myself, that plan evaporated with the first attack. It was end to end football with no time to settle on the ball. A game I knew very well. Especially the bit about it not being particularly suited to unfit forty-year-olds who hadn’t played for four years.
I slotted into position and started playing from memory, running off the ball, creating gaps, tackling back. All the time hoping that I was fitter than I imagined. And that somewhere I had some deep reservoir of untapped stamina – like a spare fuel tank that I could switch over to in time of dire need.
And then it happened. The ball flew towards me. My first touch. Was this the moment I stunned the crowd with unimaginable feats of skill? ... Or the time that stupid Englishman let the ball run through his legs for a throw in?
I think I froze the ball in mid-air with the power of concentration. Certainly there was no way I was letting that ball past me. I brought it down and then set off. Ideally, it should have been one of those mazey dribbles where the ball appears attached by a silken thread to the educated feet of the right winger.
But I hadn’t played for such a long time and, besides, the last time I’d dribbled in public had been when I got drunk at the Tuco fete.
Not to mention that a few weeks practising in the back garden dribbling over hummocks and piles of stones is not ideal preparation. A few touches and the ball flew ahead of me. If there’d been a hummock on the pitch it might have been different – but there wasn’t. And my back garden hadn’t had defenders either – two of whom were now bearing down on me from different directions and both likely to reach the ball before I did.
But football is a game of the unexpected.
The first defender lunged forward and tried to clear the ball but only succeeded in driving the ball against my shins, whereupon it flew towards the second defender, ricocheted off his knees and came back to me. The next thing I knew, I was stepping over bodies, the ball at my feet and the penalty area fast approaching.
If only it had been deliberate.
With my confidence returning, my next move became clear. The hard low cross, whipped into the penalty area with a hint of swerve to curl around the remaining defender and land at the feet of the advancing centre forward. I could see it all.
Unfortunately my right foot couldn’t.
I whipped the ball in hard and low, evading the remaining defenders ... and everyone else. It was one of those embarrassing moments when you pray there’s someone in midfield backing up the attack.
But there wasn’t. Instead, a huge gap had opened up between the penalty area – now swarming with expectant players – and the centre circle. In between – nothing. Except a ball carving a solitary path towards the far touchline.
Which is what you get for trying to be too clever and bending the ball around defenders when the simple cross would have sufficed.
I made a mental note not to try that again.
A few minutes later we forced a corner on the right and I found myself being handed the ball while everyone else shot off into the penalty area.
I would like to say that it was the quality of my cross that created the goal. That I picked out the only unmarked player, placed an unerringly accurate ball into his path and there was nothing else he could do but score.
But you’d need to be my mother to believe that.
In truth, I was concentrating on not leaning back, not hooking the ball, not slicing it and not pushing it too close to the keeper. The fact that I picked out the only unmarked player was entirely fortuitous.
We were one-nil up. Against the run of play and I’d had a hand in it. Three or four beers and a couple of rounds of Ricard and I might claim total credit – it hadn’t been his shot, he’d merely deflected my corner. A pretty solid deflection from the edge of the penalty area, but a deflection nonetheless.
Alcohol can make great players of us all.
Latoue, our opponents, pulled a goal back, then went ahead and gradually pushed the game further and further into our half of the pitch. A situation not helped by our right back employing a marking system I was unfamiliar with. It wasn’t zonal and it wasn’t man to man – unless Latoue were playing with cloaked forwards.
Which meant I had to come back and mark the winger and Latoue started pressing harder and I started playing deeper. But I was enjoying it, even tackling back and playing more as a defender – something I used to hate. It was so good to be playing again.
The last time I’d played, I’d felt old and slow, wallowing in the wake of players I could have given a five-yard start to in my prime. But in the red shirt of Racing Club, I felt young again. My stamina may have been suspect, my touch rusty but I’d rediscovered something I’d thought lost forever ... my speed.
All those years I’d played in my thirties thinking that it was age slowing me down when all the time it had been my growing waistline. All those years of living out of suitcases, pub lunches and midnight curries had pushed me to the top of the handicap.
But now, thirty pounds lighter, suddenly I was fast again.
And taking yards out of my marker every time we attacked. All I needed was someone to play the ball through to me.
And eventually someone did.
I did everything right. I took the ball in mid-stride, played it a few yards ahead, let the keeper come out and then slipped it past him. Perfect.
Unfortunately, the keeper did everything right as well. He came out, narrowed the angle, stood up and then threw out a desperate foot at the last minute, deflecting the ball wide with his toe.
I have relived that moment many times si
nce – and score every time. Why didn’t I hit it harder? Or higher? Why didn’t I take the ball round the keeper? Why didn’t I score? I should have, I did everything right!
Which is undoubtedly where I went wrong. Anyone who plays sports knows the devastating power of the unexpected. The miss-kick, the ricochet, the fluke. Like shooting straight at the keeper only for him to open his legs at the last moment and let the ball through; or bounce off his chest, hit you in the face and rebound over his head into the goal.
I have scored them all. Many times.
Which brings me to The Great Goal. Something that is still talked about in darkened saloon bars in Bournemouth. Or, at least, it is when I’m there.
oOo
I was sixteen at the time and playing for my school on a cold and blustery winter morning. We’d just attacked down the left and their goalkeeper had rushed to the edge of his area to boot the ball clear. Straight to me. I was at the halfway line, a yard or two out from the right touchline, an open goal some forty or fifty yards ahead of me. Could I do it?
Now, I knew what I had to do. If I waited to control the ball or take it closer to the goal, the moment would be gone. The keeper and defenders would be back in position and the danger would be over.
So I hit it, first time, on the half volley as hard as I could. Wham. Old men in the crowd wept. Never had a ball been hit so hard. Or so high. Or so far in the wrong direction.
It ballooned towards the right-hand corner flag, a small speck in the sky fast disappearing into the clouds. Our forwards turned and started their slow walk back to the centre circle. Another attack over, another goal kick to defend.
But I stayed watching. And watching. Was it ever going to come down? And then something strange happened. One of those magic moments when fate decides to take a hand. The speck froze in the sky ... and then began to change direction. Slowly at first, then picking up pace as a strong wind got behind it.
It was moving back towards the goal.
I noticed that the game on the pitch alongside us had come to a halt. One by one players were stopping and looking up, transfixed by the momentous events unfolding above them.